


The Days Keep Dragon On

by Jrade



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Gift Fic, Humour, Silly, Symbolism, dragon - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 07:31:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13208928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jrade/pseuds/Jrade
Summary: Dliess may be a dragon, but even dragons need to buy groceries every now and then. Sure, a shopping trip might look a little different when you whirl your way across the sky on rainbow wings, but you still end up in the cereal aisle looking confused at the vast selection, you still get an annoying cart, somebody still bumps into you. Dragons have days just like the rest of us!





	The Days Keep Dragon On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dliessmgg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dliessmgg/gifts).



> A winter gift for a friend! When prompted/lightly threatened (in a friendly way) about what they wanted as a gift, they responded with "I don't really have an idea on my own right now so uh a day in the life of cute feathery rainbow dragon me?"  
> For what it's worth, I have complete faith that they are, in fact, a cute feathery rainbow dragon.

Dliess Mgg (which was a completely normal name for a person in their situation) awoke with a start as they heard the faint tinkling of an alarm clock, and for a moment - just the barest instant - they were filled with an anticipatory sense of something somewhere between delight and dread.

_ Oh… oh dear… _

A second later, the sound was joined by another, and then another; within a moment the cavern had erupted into an almost catastrophic cacophony of alarms and bells, ringers and beepers, chimes and whistles, mechanically-produced cuckoo calls and song snippets, from near and from far, loudly and softly, and they all interwove into the symphony that began  _ every _ day for Dliess.

Such was life when one was a dragon whose hoard consisted not of gold, nor gemstones, but rather alarm clocks.

Two thousand eight hundred sixty-four alarm clocks (and one clock they’d mistakenly acquired that had no alarm whatsoever, yet they still could not bring themselves to part with); they had taken years in accumulating their hoard, yet still sometimes wondered exactly  _ why. _ Why it was they were inspired to collect alarm clocks thus, rather than some item that other people might mistakenly refer to as ‘more useful’.

Sometimes, things simply were. Sometimes, that was just how life was. That was the best explanation Dliess could come up with, the best one they had ever come up with, and they yawned now as the alarm chorus died down and was replaced by a soft smile on their dragon lips.

For a moment, they continued to lay there, lazy and languid on their pile of clocks; they were arranged of course so that the ones on which Dliess slept were all neat, compact little travel clocks or older ones with all-metal cases and internal bells. The fanciful ones with rotating brass balls and complex mechanisms, with carved statuettes which would dance on the hour, or the Grandfather clocks as well, were all stored safely and comfortably off to the side.

Dliess stretched their wings, feathered and gorgeous - they reflected every colour of the rainbow, and if one looked closely, even a few which  _ weren’t _ in any rainbow seen in the skies. It felt good to spread them, and the stretch naturally followed through the rest of Dliess’ body - their back wriggling down against the clocks on which they lay, their tail knocking a round plastic alarm clock shaped like a tomato and sending it rolling down the pile.

It was a good morning.

Then, the feathered rainbow dragon known as Dliess Mgg rose from the bed which was their hoard, and they went to the mirror. Today was grocery day, which was often an unpleasant proposition, but needs were sometimes.

Their face looked a little different every time they looked in the mirror, every day things about it seemed to have shifted - the slits of their nostrils wider or narrower, or perhaps angled in or out; their lips pulled further back or perhaps almost puffed out, their cheeks fuller or less so. That, too, was simply part of life as a dragon, though - they’d long since become accustomed to it. They still checked the mirror, though they couldn’t say exactly why. With a shrug, they turned to leave.

The wind felt so good as they took wing, streaking out of their cavern and soaring through the skies; the clouds kissed Dliess’ feathers with their soft and slightly cold moisture, tiny droplets of dew forming on the rainbowed filaments of the feathers, and when they emerged from the cloud the sunlight streamed through the prismatic droplets and set a larger rainbow in motion, one which struck across the sky like a comet’s tail and hung there for the joy of all those below who could look up and see it.

Dliess touched down gently outside of the local Tesco and shook off the water from their wings. “Heck! Damp out today,” they muttered under their breath, swiping a particularly stubborn droplet of water off of one wingtip with a hand as they walked into the grocery store.

Almost mindlessly, they wandered the aisles, pushing their cart which somehow managed to always have a squeaky wheel. A hundred times they’d been to this store, and every time, every other person had a squeakless cart, yet Dliess’ cart would squeak. They only shrugged it off, though - that was simply the way life was, sometimes.

Somebody bumped into their shoulder quite roughly - someone who rushed off, muttering below their breath and not even seeming to notice what had happened. “Heck!” Dliess glanced over their shoulder in mild irritation. “Some people!”

At the same time, though, they realized that - realistically - the person had probably meant no harm. They’d probably been hurried and distracted, and Dliess sighed slightly and thought pleasanter rainbow thoughts in that person’s general direction, hoping that whoever they were, they could have an easier day as it went forward.

Halfway through pulling a box of cereal off of the shelf, Dliess noticed somebody looking at them - a small child, sitting in the basket of the cart and gripping onto the edge with sausagelike little fingers, staring up with wide eyes.

“Momma,” the child murmured softly, reaching out to tug at a person’s coat - their mother, presumably, who was tiredly comparing the nutritional information tables of four slightly different boxes of Sugar-Blasted Oatie-O’s cereal (Honey nut, Choco-bomb, Almonds’n’syrup, and eXXXtreme Honey-nut). “Is that a boy or a girl?”

“You’ll have to ask them, Johnathan sweetie,” the mother wearily replied, somehow balancing the boxes of cereal whilst picking up a fifth (RANCH MADNESS flavoured) in that magical way that only mothers seem to be capable of. “It’s not as if  _ I _ could tell you.”

The child - Johnathan Sweetie, it would seem - leaned forward and reached out, tugging gently at the feathers on Dliess’ arm as they smiled back softly. “Hi! I’m Johnathan! Are you a boy or a girl?”

“Oh, well, erm,” Dliess cleared their throat, glancing up to the mother who now held seven boxes of cereal for comparison. The mother didn’t seem at all concerned with anything else, though, and Dliess leaned down to the child Johnathan with a grin on their lips. “I’m neither, really - I’m a dragon.”

Johnathan Sweetie’s eyes widened, the other hand reaching out from the cart to stroke at Dliess’ feathers as well. “Wow! Really? Momma momma! I wanna be a dragon too!”

“Well, we’ll just need to wait and see if you are, sweetie,” the mother yawned, putting one box of cereal into the cart and filing the other six back into their places on the shelves. “It’s not as if  _ I _ could tell you.”

“Oh.” Johnathan frowned a little, then reached clumsily around at their own back. “Aww… no wings…”

The child didn’t look happy at all about this, and Dliess smiled sadly, crouching down slightly to be at eye level with Johnathan. “Hey,” they whispered softly as the child wiped at their cheeks, “hey don’t worry! It’s okay to not know exactly what you are right now - and do you want to know a secret?”

Sniffling, Johnathan Sweetie nodded, and Dliess’ smile grew as they leaned in, eyes sparkling. “It’s not  _ wings _ that make a dragon, anyway. The  _ true _ dragon is inside you.”

With a gasp, the child sat back, eyes wide in shock and disbelief. Dliess nodded as they stood up, grinning, and Johnathan looked back with a look of surprise slowly melting to delight, and with eyes that shone in awe in that way that children’s always do when they hear something particularly profound.

“Thanks,” sighed the mother with a tired smile. “Better for them to hear it right from the source.”

“Of course,” Dliess agreed with a grin and a nod. It was nice to see a parent who really wanted to educate their child - to give them the best chance at moving forward without too many stumbling blocks. “I think you’re doing a great job, by the way.”

“Thanks,” the mother yawned, nodding as she started to push the cart along. “You too.”

Dliess grinned widely as they watched the mother and child head off down the aisle and turn away at the end, a warm feeling spreading through their core - and not in the way it did before breathing fire. They nodded a little, chuckling. “That’s one heckie of a good mom right there,” they murmured, turning back to the shelves and pulling a box of eXXXtreme Honey-nut Sugar-Blasted Oatie-O’s cereal into their cart.

The box promised a free flute inside, and Dliess felt a tingle, and wondered for a moment if they were going to develop a  _ second  _ hoard - one of esoteric musical instruments and paraphernalia. It wasn’t unheard of, certainly, and while they’d not considered it before, these things could change. Life was like that sometimes.

Then, Dliess went about the rest of their shopping trip. Milk, oranges, oats, four boxes of raisins, a pumpkin, and a few other things.

The cashier looked levelly across the till at Dliess when it came time to scan through two dozen different alarm clocks. There were more alarm clocks than everything else combined.

“Heh,” Dliess fidgeted a little, shrugging with an abashed smile, “sorry. I just… like clocks.”

The cashier only shrugged blankly, because they didn’t really  _ care _ if somebody bought two dozen alarm clocks, but they weren’t going to pretend like it was a commonplace occurrence. They scanned everything else through and then read out the total, almost mechanically, accepting payment before turning to the next customer in line.

With three big bags of groceries, Dliess stepped out of the store and back into the sun, taking a moment just to enjoy the feel of its rays on their face and their wings. They stretched and took a deep breath, sighing it slowly out.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh”, they grinned, letting the warmth of the sun soak into them through their rainbow feathers, “ahhhhhhhh heck I forgot to buy bread.”

Chuckling and shaking their head, Dliess turned around to head back into the store - they hung their bags of already-purchased groceries on the hat-rack near the front door. Maybe it was a bit of an inconvenience, but it wasn’t the end of the world: sometimes, one forgot bread.

That was just the way life was sometimes.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I don't expect a lot of people will read this, but for those that did, I hope you liked it! Mostly it was just supposed to be a cute, nice little thing, but there are a couple of messages in it as well. Anyway; have a great day, folks!


End file.
